What is the greatest closing line in literature?

Not sure, but the ending of Dune Messiah with Chani dying in childbirth, Paul losing both his sight and prescience and just wandering off into the desert to let it claim him probably moved me the most from a storytelling perspective.

>As the rocket's vapourtrail refracted the banana yellow light of the sun, Slothrop truly saw Gravity's Rainbow

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

>as javerts soul floated to heaven he understood that Valjean's life has made the lives of those around him less miserable.

Hugo wtf...

This one is good

Others include:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Great Gatsby
The Dead

And the undisputed GOAT: Ulysses

In all seriousness:

His body jolted backward, jolted the floorboards, and Ella Mae Waterson screamed, but Robert Ford only looked at the ceiling, the light going out of his eyes before he could say the right words.

kek'd

I hate to see the sun go down, Bret said and leaned into my shoulder.
The sun also rises, Bret, I said.
The sun also rises.

Really Hemmingway?

>On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was
the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.

> I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

I'd love to see a movie of Messiah. There is the TV version, which made the climax into a montage. Okay, but kinda cheap (watch Stilgar's knife in the scene with Mohiam).

youtube.com/watch?v=LQwFOvbQsxo

rofl

>Whereupon, I gave her the dick.

“I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.”

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another… then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes

To the fair world: and heedless of repose
We climb'd, he first, I following his steps,
Till on our view the beautiful lights of Heaven
Dawn'd through a circular opening in the cave:
Thence issuing we again beheld the stars.

One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, "Poo-tee-weet?"

bravissimo

Best one ITT, and probably the best ever. I teared up when I first read this

Death to me. They’re eating me alive. I must die now. I’m about to die and it’s the happiest day of my pathetic life. Soon, I will be free. I will be reborn. I will find my family. I will join my family. I will help them rid the world of you. I will help them remove the heads of all Satans.

But the hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.'s throat, while the other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there, twice. As his eyesight failed, K. saw the two gentlemen cheek by cheek, close in front of his face, watching the result.
"Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.

>The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.

THIS IS NOT AN EXIT

Now you are husband and wife, Male and Female Reader. A large bed welcomes your parallel reading.
Ludmilla closes her book, shuts off her light, abandons her head on her cheek, says: "Shut off your light as well. Aren't you tired of reading?"
And you: "Just one moment. I am about to finish If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino."

based

*laugh*

I can't go on, I'll go on.

Kill yourself. This is dogshit. Terrible book.

And as Bloom passed the threshold of his home he truly became Ulysses

>doesn't even quote it correctly

For once one where a little effort is put in

americanbookreview.org/pdf/100_best_last_lines_from_novels.pdf

/thread

After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

The old man was dreaming about the lions.

Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would
never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages)
would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise
moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and
that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and
forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not
have a second opportunity on earth.

wie ein Hund

I looked over at atlas and asked a question but he couldn't hear me so atlas Shrugged

Jesus Christ really?

"HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND LET NO ONE BE LEFT BEHIND!"

I cried desu

That's one of my favorites too its a truly fitting end

>he posts on Veeky Forums
>he hates on based Italo Calvino
Ammazza te stesso, famiglia.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

and then I read the "afterward" written by whoever and he makes a point of saying Dickens' isn't flawless here, he's often melodramatic and too sentimental. The final lines are a great example of this... mfw

>It's okay, old man... squeeze my titties just like we will soon squeeze... The Grapes of Wrath.

Wow. And they make kids read this shit in school?

literally finished this book last night. ??? lmao really Steinbeck? Ending was right facked.

>Veeky Forums loves trite, obvious, defeatist garbage
wew, what a surprise.

Und im Westen, nicht neues

I walked inside the hospital, and then walked around the block to O'Malley's pub. Inside, it was as they say. For whom the bell tolls, time marches on.

SERIOUSLY?

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the great Gatsby.

Sun Also Rises is a masterpiece.

Don't let lit pull down one of the greatest American authors for you.

As Molly stirred in bed unable to rest she thought,
"My husband kinda reminds me of that Odysseus guy lol"
Wtf Joyce

"I have no mouth. And I must scream."

I truly understand the importance of being earnest.

I'm not joking.

????
WHAT IF
this was actually a book's ending????

this

And since then I have not regained consciousness, and I never will.

Oh thou great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabbath's sight...

Poo-tee-weet?

yaaaaa boiiiiii

>being moved to anything except but absolute disgust by anything related to Dune

...

He fell in October, 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.

>poo-tee-weet
swear to God Kurt Vonnegut has never heard a bird in his life

>there are plebs who don't prefer the revised over the original ending

If you think his onomatopoeia is bad, see Joyce's.

His eyesight was bad, but he must have been at least half-deaf too. Either that or it was a running joke through all his work.

I often wonder(ed) if Vonnegut's onomatopoeia was intentionally terrible or not, nice to see I'm not alone

"There was no noise."

A lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Epic! Have an upvote, gracious sir or, perhaps if I am especially lucky, madam! ;)

I'm Thomas Pynchon
and this was Mason & Dixon

"The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky – seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness."

im not kidding.

EGO

america 2006 tokyo 2016

Joyce was definitely bullshitting.

I think the fact that he misrepresents sounds in his work is a long-term allusion to his own failing eyesight. That is, an attempt to have the reader empathise with what it's like to have a sense (or sensory organ) fail, and the imagination required to compensate for this with your other senses (or imagination).

"All was well"

Mishima? Runaway Horses, maybe?

MRKRGNAO

Their heavy shots had splashed into him, and they had followed him all the way, firing as they did, with that contagious passion peculiar to hunters.

>Dude individualism lmao

That would have been a great last line for the book.

Better recognize, plebs.

And the tide was way out.

the meme book Veeky Forums doesn't deserve

"I know myself," he cried, "but that is all."

>I'm not joking.
But he was.

This was good.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed

*tips revolver*

I scattered. There was no loss or ambiguity; I simply vanished. I was Gone With the Wind

yep

In the end he finally realized that his family's downfall was living 100 Years of Solitude. My name is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I would like to personally thank you for reading my book. Please check out my podcast on Sirius XM Radio.

“Lord take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the unbeliever who would fain believe, on the galley slave of life who puts out to sea alone under a firmament no longer lit by the consoling beacon fires of the ancient hope.”

top shelf

Right now in my drunken stupor I can only think of why the protagonist thinks he is legend in I am Legend

what book is this?